CHAPTER 460: YOU MUST BE SO TIRED

"You... sigh..."

Michael sighed softly. His fingers expertly ruffled the fluffy cat ears, then moved down to her hair, gently twirling the silky strands with his index finger.

"You silly girl. How do you remember it so clearly?"

Michael’s voice trembled, and a numbing spasm ran through his chest, but Pardofelis probably didn’t notice. She giggled and snuggled deeper into his embrace, then explained with a proud look on her face.

"I’ve been saving up silver coins! Every day, I put one in a clay jar! And every time I put one in, I make a mark on the jar... What’s that mark called again... Zheng! Hua taught it to me. She said it’s an ancient character from Shenzhou, really good for counting!"

"You silly girl, what are you saving up so much money for in here..."

"Hey, Big Bro Michael, you just don’t get it! Those bosses who come here for trials, if you just give them items and Signets, they get scared you’re trying to pull a fast one on them. So, I made a bunch of shiny silver coins with cat paw prints on them to trade! Hehe! That way, they trust the Signets I give them. Big Bro Michael, don’t you think they’re silly?"

"They certainly are."

Michael chuckled, but it didn’t last long. He gently set Pardofelis down. He first flicked her forehead with his index finger, then ruffled Rin’s hair.

"You two..."

As the initial excitement faded, Pardofelis and Rin finally remembered what they had been doing.

Where were they? The central processing hub of the entire Elysian Realm.

And what was Rin’s job? To guard the Twelfth Divine Key, which served as the central hub, and maintain its normal operation.

Although the job was as simple as watching a library, getting caught playing games on a library computer was still a bit much, wasn’t it?

And this was a place far more serious than any library!

Michael deliberately dragged out the end of his sentence. Seeing the two girls’ anxious faces, he couldn’t help but laugh again.

"Alright, am I that scary? Just... remember to turn on the lights next time you play. What, is it more exciting to play in the dark? Is it good for your eyes?"

Hearing Michael say this, Pardofelis and Rin finally let out the breath they had been holding.

Smiles quickly returned to their faces. The two carefree girls soon grabbed Michael, chattering away about interesting things that had happened in the Elysian Realm over the past five hundred years, and even further back over the past fifty thousand.

"Hey! Big Bro Michael, did you know? Sis Dystopia had a fight with A-Mo a while ago. You should have seen the look on A-Mo’s face, he was so wronged! But he didn’t talk back once..."

"Big Bro Michael, you’d never believe that someone as gentle as Sis Nia would actually argue with Uncle Kosma and Sis Blanca over little Griseo’s education..."

Michael smiled a hollow smile, letting the endless stream of meaningless words and stories wash over him, and his smile grew wider.

He said nothing, just listened quietly until the two girls got tired and went to find water. Only then did he speak again.

"Pardo, Rin, I’m sorry. This is all the time I can spend with you on this visit."

The room suddenly became too quiet. Perhaps Pardofelis and Rin had expected this from the start. Was that why they had spoken so quickly before, to say more in a shorter amount of time?

And wasn’t their act of stopping to get water a tactful way of bringing things to an end?

"I’m sorry," Michael said, repeating the same useless words as he slowly stood up.

"Rin, I need to check the Elysian Realm’s operational records."

"Ah... ah? Okay, I’ll..."

"No need."

Michael sat down directly in front of Rin’s computer. He didn’t even touch it. He just stuck his index finger in front of the USB port. After a faint blue glow, the first joint of his finger transformed into a connector and slid perfectly into the port.

Michael closed his eyes. A second later, he withdrew his now-normal finger and stood up from the chair.

Seeing Rin staring intently at the top of her feet, her ears flushed red, the corner of Michael’s mouth twitched.

"Uh... hehehe, I didn’t know you were into that sort of... uh, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t see anything!"

"Uh... Big Bro Michael, what are you saying to Rin?"

Pardofelis’s innocent question was the last straw. Rin covered her ears and squatted down, while Michael vanished in a flash, reappearing in the Elysian Realm’s main hall.

"Hooo—"

He leaned back heavily against the soft sofa, an irrepressible smile spreading across his face. He felt the kind of pride a parent feels when their child has grown up.

Once he had calmed down, he began to go through the records of the Twelfth Divine Key.

In just one second, even his brain couldn’t process too much information, especially not five hundred years’ worth of it.

So, all he had done just now was the "extraction" step. The actual browsing and organizing of the information would have to start now.

As for Rin’s browsing history, that was just an accident. It was like going into a room to get something—you could never control what you would see the moment you opened the door.

The smile on Michael’s face slowly faded as he began to seriously review each record.

The Authority of Reason already required high-speed brain processing. Combined with the "datafication" brought by the Authority of Corruption, he processed information at an abnormally fast rate.

"Vill-V has entered and exited the Realm most frequently over the past five hundred years? Makes sense. For her, a world where she can’t ’innovate’ is too monotonous. The last time she went out was six months ago?"

The reason he checked Vill-V’s records first was partly because she was the most frequent traveler, and partly because Rin had mentioned that the game she was playing was brought back from the outside by Vill-V, hadn’t she?

Unfortunately, after briefly adding Vill-V to his "suspect list," Michael quickly removed her.

Vill-V had left the Realm many times, mostly in recent years. After all, older eras held little attraction for a constant innovator like her. A completely different civilization might have been interesting, but one that was just a reset version of their own, with little difference, probably didn’t interest her much.

Although the Realm’s archives didn’t show where Vill-V had gone, Michael could see the times she entered and exited, and how long she stayed outside. A quick comparison showed that nothing particularly special seemed to have happened during those times—or at least, nothing that would make Michael feel guilty.

The duration of her stays also varied, which was very much in her style.

Of course, this was just a preliminary screening. He could always read the memory data’s memories directly, but he wanted to finish the initial screening first.

Next, naturally, was to check Sakura’s entry and exit records. If he could find the last time she left the Realm, he could roughly determine what had prompted her to make her current decision. But...

"How is that possible!"

Michael’s body, which had been leaning against the sofa, instantly tensed. He stared at the entry and exit records, displayed in his mind as data.

The page was blank, just like his thoughts at that moment.

Five hundred years ago, Sakura had never returned to the Elysian Realm at all!

Michael felt he couldn’t stay in this place a moment longer.

Whether Sakura had returned to the Elysian Realm five hundred years ago or not was, in itself, not that important. At least, not important enough to shake Michael to his core.

But... Michael had later confirmed this with Mobius.

What did that mean?

It didn’t really take much thought, but in that instant, Michael felt an urge "not to dig any deeper."

Of course, it was possible that Mobius herself had been deceived in some way. But there was another possibility that Michael couldn’t deny—that Mobius, in the end, had also... not betrayed him, but turned away from him.

"Heh..."

Michael let out a cold laugh. He closed his eyes, feeling an overwhelming fatigue.

He slowly slumped sideways onto the sofa, propping his head up with his hand, as if not lying down completely was his last act of defiance.

Although he’d always said... no, he’d never actually said it. But he had always believed that he would accept any choice the Flame-Chasers made of their own free will. Whether they chose to be his enemy or his friend, he would face their new relationship with the utmost seriousness.

And... he had never wanted the Flame-Chasers to just stay in the Realm, lost in the past, quietly waiting for the end to come.

But to discover that, one by one, they had turned away from him, choosing a path that directly opposed his own...

Thinking back on the time they had spent together as comrades, how could he possibly feel nothing?

What’s more, Mobius held a special significance for Michael.

Sometimes, Michael couldn’t help but wonder: if, at the moment of the Final Herrscher’s descent, Elysia had survived and Mobius had been the one to sacrifice her life, would he still have ended up here?

Or to put it more simply: Elysia was at least as important to him as the entire world. What about Mobius?

The answer was—Michael couldn’t give a definite answer.

And the fact that he couldn’t give a definite answer already meant a lot.

From one perspective, it meant that Mobius didn’t hold that much weight in his heart. But from another, it also meant that it was truly possible he would have done for her what he had done for Elysia.

And that possibility wasn’t small, otherwise he wouldn’t be hesitating to give a definite answer even now.

But now, even she was going to stand against him... Then Michael felt that his entire fifty-thousand-year life was a complete and utter failure...

No! He suddenly snapped out of it.

He was just habitually thinking of the "worst-case scenario." He was just that pessimistic. But hadn’t he also come up with another explanation from the start? Mobius had neither the Authority of Sentience nor the Authority of Corruption. Deceiving her, creating the illusion that Sakura had indeed returned to the Realm, wasn’t that difficult, was it?

All he had to do was go and confirm it with Mobius directly. In his presence, no one could lie.

Perhaps he should also check on M.E.I., and even her... but he couldn’t bring himself to look at the Elysian Realm’s operational records anymore. He would wait until he had confirmed things with Mobius.

But... even though the World Serpent headquarters was right outside the Elysian Realm, and the physical distance between him and Mobius was not great, he just felt tired. He just wanted to rest for a little while on this sofa where Elysia had once lain.

He didn’t have much time. He only had one day with Otto. He had to be back at St. Freya Academy before sunrise tomorrow, and then, step by step, continue to push forward the hands of time that could no longer be turned back.

But he was tired, so very tired.

He had come all this way.

Just a little more rest.

His last act of defiance disappeared. He let go of the hand propping up his head.

His head fell into a soft embrace, but the elasticity was clearly not that of a sofa.

"Hehe..."

He chuckled softly.

A pair of cool hands gently covered his eyes. He obediently closed them, letting her fingers massage from his eye sockets to his temples.

"Feel better?"

"Yes. Thank you, Elysia."

"Oh? You guessed so easily? I should have covered your eyes first and asked, ’Guess who?’"

"I could never guess wrong."

"Hmph! You wouldn’t dare guess wrong!"

Although his eyes were closed, Michael could feel Elysia shaking a fist in front of his face.

He tried to keep a straight face, but finally, a genuine laugh escaped him.

But the laughter wasn’t just filled with relief; it also contained a suppressed helplessness and sorrow.

What had he been doing for the past fifty thousand years?

Did he regret it? Not for a single moment did he not.

He had thought about another ending, one where he accepted Elysia’s sacrifice and then, as the Herrscher of Finality, controlled all the Honkai energy, thus saving the world.

But would such a world still be worth saving?

Michael had never thought that a world without Elysia was meaningless, especially after seeing what the other him had done. What had truly driven him to make that decision back then wasn’t just Elysia; it was that the world was already destroyed. He had just shoveled the last bit of dirt on its grave.

But he still regretted it. So be it. One cannot help but regret the past. As long as a choice has more than one possible outcome, humans will inevitably imagine the other possibilities.

Forcing oneself not to think about it, forcing oneself to say "I don’t regret it," was never a sign of maturity or strength.

And in Michael’s eyes, it was just... regret? Of course, he regretted it. But so what? He could regret it all he wanted, but he would still, step by step, walk on the path of time that could not be reversed.

But such maturity, such strength, was shattered by a single sentence from Elysia:

"Doing something you don’t like must be so tiring."

His breathing hitched for a moment. Michael wanted to say, "I’m not tired," but he knew he couldn’t lie to Elysia.

"Don’t be in such a hurry to leave this time. Rest by my side for a while longer. I haven’t seen you in so long..."

"I’m sorry, I have to go soon."

"I know. I won’t force you to stay. But you still have some time before you leave, right? Get some rest here."

"I... I still have things to do..."

"Mmm... then, how about this? Rest for one hour. Relax, clear your mind, don’t think about anything. Just rest your head on my lap and sleep, okay?"

Before Michael could refuse again, she sealed his lips with her own.

After a long moment, she lifted her head slightly and whispered softly in his ear.

"I’ll wake you up in an hour. No refusing, okay? I’ll get angry!"

"Okay."

Michael truly couldn’t refuse anymore. He turned over, resting the side of his head on Elysia’s lap, his face buried in her stomach, his arms wrapped around her waist.

With each breath, Elysia’s unique fragrance filled his nostrils, washing over his consciousness like a tide. Instead of making him sleepy, his exhaustion was replaced by an intense clarity and alertness.

And...

Restlessness.

So, his hands uncontrollably began to climb higher.

"Eh? You... you... not here!"

Michael felt like he had heard that line somewhere before.